Should I stay or should I go

the urge to leave social media platforms

There it is again — a goodbye post. It includes a small list of the things they will miss and maybe the peace out emoji. It includes a bunch of comments from folks considering doing the same thing. It includes links to new spaces where they’ve started new accounts that they may or may not start using. They hope you’ll follow them there. And if not, then bye forever I guess!

Should I stay, or should I go now?
Should I stay, or should I go now?
If I go, there will be trouble
And if I stay, it will be double
- The Clash

We have a complicated relationship with social media right now. We talk lots about screen time rules for kids, how they’re on their phones too much, how kids shouldn’t* have phones in school. We read Anxious Generation in book club. We, as adults, can’t get off our phones. And we hate it. As the parent to a toddler and a teenager, it’s all about screens. From the pediatrician’s office to the high school’s newsletter. We talk a lot about screens and habits and not nearly enough about how parents just can’t put our phones down.

None of us can. We are working from home, from the playground, from the train. Checking email, jumping from one social platform to another. My mom likes to post on this one! My friends post close friends over here! I use this one to zone out after a long day! I’m researching (googling) ailments! This thread could change my life! I need to order new pants and dishwasher tabs!

I think we hate it. I think we don’t want to be this connected. I think we want to break free a little. And fleeing, making it his fault (or his!) makes that a little easier. It’s certainly a lot easier than figuring out how to have a healthy relationship with our little pocket computers. We hate how much we rely on it. And we hate that other people (men!) have power over the whole thing. We’re tired of this cycle. And we’re terrified of what’s to come. Rebecca Woolf pointed out on Instagram this week — we are in fight or flight.

I don’t think fleeing will fix any of this. I think we should stay. I think we should fight.

We should fight for the community space to share what we love. Fight for what is good, what is right. Fight even for the space to have hard conversations with folks (or family members!) we don’t agree with.

Fight to live our lives with joy. Trans joy. Black joy. Fight for it.

I don’t mean fight in the comment section and Rebecca didn’t mean that either. She talked about standing up, looking them in the eye and saying no.

No, you can’t take this from me.

No, you can’t stop me from sharing my life, my joys, my struggles, my ideas with my community.

It is a radical act to be an out trans parent. To be me, beautifully, wonderfully, chaotically me. It is a radical act to read my baby a book on the subway, knowing that someone could clock my voice as too high to be cis. It is a radical act to be called Apa, to break social rules, to use different pronouns, to even use a public bathroom.

It is a radical act to share all of it. To let people see me. To let people judge me. To let people hate me. To let people love me. And I know we’re tired. I am too. But I think we should keep going.

It’s radical to stay and fight. Not with our words and carefully crafted comments. But to fight with our right to exist. To stay when we aren’t welcome, protected, or even tolerated. To do it anyway. Because we deserve these spaces. We deserve the communities we worked so hard to build. They don’t get to take that from us. They can’t have this as theirs, because this is ours. We’re here together. We’re all in this together.

It’s hard and will likely get harder. And still, I’m going to stay. And will continue working on my phone habits.